chris,
I opened up up two konsoles ( one as root), in user konsole I ran alsamixer, (what a terrible interface ,
and after some mucking about set the sound card to device 0 ( not default), I exited assuming some info had been set somewhere, then I entered the root konsole
and ran "alsactl store 0" -- is this what you meant ??

In any case no sound is heard VLC, volume set high, not mute, track slider moves, etc.

As an aside : sound control in Linux appears to be a massive mess

I installed a copy of MEPIS 64, find sound options different to aptosid, Amorak plays its default tune, but refuses to play off the CD, Kaffeine plays a VIDEO , shows pictures, but no sound !

BTW: sound system worked fine under Windows 7 [ Since deleted as I want the laptop to be Linux only ]

Some success ! I have finally managed to get Kaffeine working ! Unfortuately
I have no real idea why ! I removed/reinstalled Kaffeine, updated a few libs
and installed "volumecontrol.app" at the suggestion of a friend who had had
similar problems with a Mandriva installation.

Not all tools tried are functioning however. Below are most of the packages I installed
in a effort to get "something" toplay CD's !

==========various software tools tried to get a cd played =======

kaffeine : did not work initially , works now, I did remove & reinstall it.